A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

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address their viewers as an extended group of acquaintances, if not old friends...
creating a sense of shared participation in events by friends who both know one
another and what there is to know (Wilson, 2005:20).
Whether viewers are addressed as acquaintances, friends or as members of a mythical
extended national „family‟, there is an appearance of an attempt to engage with individuals.
To suggest this, however, is not to imply that the meaning of texts is apprehended and
received in the same way by all viewers. As Wilson expresses it, reading is „always and
everywhere a fusion of horizons, drawing upon, and producing difference‟ (Wilson,
2005:21). Just as any individual‟s experience is of a series of related life-worlds and social
roles (e.g. husband, father, step-father, employee, club member, neighbour, disabled or non-
disabled person), simultaneously within the same physical space and yet within a loose
cultural community, so appropriation of the meaning of broadcast communication is open to
endless interpretation.
It is unnecessary for the viewer to see the same thing as the person sitting next to her, or to
recognise herself in the texts of television, so long as she recognises somebody like herself or
whose roles she can identify with. Viewers will regard texts as they relate to their own
experiences and life-worlds, which will themselves be determined by the social roles they
occupy in the private sphere of everyday life (which will be dealt with and managed
distinctly by particular individuals). While conflicting interests are present in every situation,
the meaning of any text can be disputed and challenged endlessly from any number of
positions. It needs to be recognised, however, that conversation forms the basis for the
establishment of shared understandings, life-worlds and horizons, and that media texts are
frequently drawn on as resources in developing these conversations.
The viewer can „read‟ the roles which he or she inhabits in particular ways,
inflecting them through an individual experience and understanding of the world.
The concept of „role‟ allows a theorising of the relationship between subject and
society which suggests neither a determination of behaviour by social structure nor a
reducing of the societal to the individual (Wilson, 2005:31)
While TV, then, does not actually address individuals but social roles within life-worlds
filled by unknown viewers, the familiarity implied in the presenter‟s friendly greeting or
smile persuades individuals they are being addressed personally. Karen Dill suggests that: